A Pakistani-Griffith family will try again to bring their mother to Australia after she was denied a visa to see her dying husband.
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Nazir Ahmad died in Griffith base hospital last Friday after suffering a stroke while visiting his children in Griffith from Pakistan. The family report he was buried at Griffith cemetery on Monday.
A few days before he died, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection rejected his wife Nasreen Kausar’s application for a visitor’s visa, despite a plea from a Griffith base hospital doctor to allow her to visit Australia on compassionate grounds.
The family are now saving and preparing for another struggle with the immigration department in the hope of being reunited.
Erum Shaista, Mr Ahmad’s daughter, said “we are not a terrorists. My father came here in 1971, and has always worked hard and done the right thing”.
Over the past few years, Mr Ahmad lived in Pakistan with his wife Mrs Kausar. Her family fear for her safety as a 50-year-old single mother in Pakistan.
“She lives in a dangerous area, she could easily be robbed or attacked. She is so isolated and sad there too. She needs to be here with her family right now,” Mrs Shaista said.
Mrs Shaista said the family will seek a longer-term visa for her mother this time, and said the family can support her.
This may be an even greater struggle for the family, as Mrs Kausar’s visa application was rejected last week on the grounds the immigration department felt she would not return home to Pakistan.
“After considering the information that was provided as evidence of the applicant’s purpose in visiting Australia, I am not satisfied that the applicant genuinely intends to visit Australia temporarily,” the department wrote.
Mrs Shaistra said previously the immigration department had questioned whether Mrs Kausar was really the biological mother of her four children in Australia.
“We are prepared to take DNA test,” Mrs Shaista said.
Mrs Shaista said a new application for the visa will take up to eight weeks to process, and involve many trips to Sydney and expensive immigration lawyers.
Anyone who would like to offer support or legal advice to the family, who are struggling with immigration bureaucracy, can get in touch with Mr Ahmad’s daughter Erum Shaistra at erum.2009@yahoo.com.